


Silent Shadows

by artematthew



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb hates alternate timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 22:51:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20683241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artematthew/pseuds/artematthew
Summary: Caleb experiments with one of his new spells.He doesn't expect just how much seeing it in action might hurt.(Spoilers for Episode 2x77.)





	Silent Shadows

The first time he uses _Resonant Echo_, he's surprised by the figure that steps forth. He'd thought his clothes now were fancy, but from the silhouette that appears it seems his clothing is... _much_ more fancy.

He stares at it for a moment, feeling it regard him back. "_What happened?_" He whispers it in hoarse Zemnian, but it doesn't respond. He looks back at the group huddling around the campfire, a little ways away from where he'd walked to test out this spell. He looks back at the shadow in the dim light, orders it to cast _Dancing Lights_, and watches it disappear back into the flow of discarded timelines.

It becomes a ritual for him, when they haven't had a need for him to use the level of power required for the spell. He casts it a few times, stopping with each one to examine its clothes and ask one question. "_Who are you?_"

Sometimes the clothes are the rags he recognizes from the asylum.

Sometimes the clothes are the coat he used to have, the one that he got rid of a while ago when the bat shit smell wouldn't leave, even with professional cleaning. It looks tattered on the echo, more than his ever was.

Some are clothed in simple threads, like he used to see on the older men in Blumenthal.

One appears, dressed in what he can only guess are high mage robes. This one carries itself with an air of grace and confidence that he can only stare at and dismiss as quickly as possible.

Yet another shows up with chains around its wrists, still able to cast when he commands. Would he have been the prisoner in the Dungeon of Penance, had things gone a little differently?

He casts and he casts, sitting with most of them before letting them go. There must be some end to the other possibilities. There is only one him that exists now. These are merely scraps, timelines that never came to fruition.

There is only him.

There is only Caleb Widogast, the one that is here now.

There could have been others, but the past is set and the future is uncertain, and always will be until it, too, becomes the past.

But that doesn't stop him from wondering what could have been, if things were different.


End file.
